Movie Review

Directed by Pedro Almodovar, starring Javier Camara, Lenor Waitling, and the participation of Geraldine Chapman, Spanish with English subtitles, 144 minutes, 2002.

This is a movie about Resurrection from the enfant terrible of Spanish film. Previous movies include the Oscar winning All About My Mother. He welcomes characters from the fringes of society and specializes in melodrama. In this movie there are two crippling accidents two beautiful and talented women, an unexplained pregnancy, suicide, two love triangles and a miraculous resurrection that can only be attributed to the healing power of love. Whew!

Marco is a journalist still trying to recover from his failed relationship with a young drug addict. He is falling in love with Lydia who is a bull fighter with a lot of self doubt because she lives in the shadow of her better known boyfriend who is also a toreador. Alicia is a young and shy ballerina who has ended up in a clinic in a coma after a car accident. Benigno is a nurse who attends to Alicia's medical and personal care needs in the clinic; bathing her, doing her hair and nails, turning her regularly. He is also in love with her and talks with her constantly, filling her in on the daily news. These characters come together when Lydia is gored in a bull fight and ends up in the same clinic in a coma. Marco is completely at a loss how to respond and Benigno offers the advice which is the title of the film.

But the title is ironic because just before her death Lydia says to Marco, "We must talk; after the fight." "We are talking", replies Marco. "No, you're talking", she replies. In fact, she had wanted to tell him that she and her toreador boyfriend had reconciled and were about to marry. Marco finds this out at Lydia's bedside when the boyfriend tells him. The pathos of the story is contained in Marco's words "There's nothing worse than leaving someone you still love".

The story is carried along with flashbacks and in one of them we discover that Benigno watched Alicia dance in a studio across from his apartment. He follows her and discovers that her father is a psychiatrist so he contrives a problem for himself in order to gain access to their apartment. In his conversation with the doctor he talks of his loneliness, his father's long absence, his care for his mother over a long period and his lack of experience with women. The doctor diagnoses him as "sexually confused". When Benigno becomes his daughter's nurse he is not troubled about the intimacy of that care because he presumes Benigno to be gay. But Alicia is discovered to be pregnant and Benigno is accused of rape and sent to prison. Miraculously, Alicia recovers from her coma because of the birth (the child dies) and while she has some disability returns to the dance studio for therapy.

Technically, medically it is resuscitation, a not unheard of phenomenon. Theologically, Alicia comes back from the dead to new life and that resurrection brings new community to those around her. Benigno, the 'cause' of the entire problem (or is he??), Judas like, commits suicide even though it may have been his act that prompts resurrection.

A strong theme in the story is the development of the friendship between the two male characters, Marco and Benigno. They are bonded in tragedy and alternately strong and needy. But as in the Gospel story, they are like Jesus and Judas, linked in the drama that brings New Life.

This seems a serious movie but it has several comic parts brought by minor characters with odd 'one liners' to relieve the tension as well as an amusing silent film sequence. If you missed this one first time through the store, it's worth a look.